100 People? Really?

Last week I went shopping at a local membership store, something similar to Costco in the United States. This place is called S&R. I went there to buy a few household items that we needed and bought some things for dinner as well.

After going through the checkout line, I saw a friend there, his name is Trevor, and he is from the UK. Trevor saw me at about the same time, and we said hi, as I went over to speak with him. Quickly after that, his wife joined us. We had a nice talk.

Trevor has been a reader of one of my other websites for some time, and I met him also in person back in December at another local grocery store. At that time in December, we got talking, and Trevor mentioned that he could see I had lost a lot of weight. Trevor is a thin man, he really has no need to lose weight. Anyway, I was telling him that I was doing a ketogenic diet and that I was also fasting. When I mentioned about fasting, and how I had done many fasts of five, 10, and even up to 20 days (at that time, I have now done up to 28 days in a single fast), he was absolutely shocked. He asked me if I wasn’t weak? I told him no, I was actually quite energized when I did fasting. Anyway, we had a nice conversation back in December, and it was nice to see Trevor again.

I was kinda blown away, though, last week, when Trevor told me that he and his wife had started doing intermittent fasting, and also eating a ketogenic diet. They are both very thin, and certainly, don’t need to lose weight. They told me that they were doing it for the health benefits, found it easy to do, and we’re feeling very good.

After we finished our discussion, I got thinking about it and realized that over the past year a lot of people have told me that due to reading my articles and seeing what I was doing with fasting, they were also starting fasting. Some are doing extended fasting, others are doing intermittent fasting. After I got home I started compiling a list. In some cases, I had to think back of people who had told me that in person, and I also went back through posts that I had made on Facebook and on my blog. I came up with more than 100 names of friends and readers who had told me that they decided to start fasting after seeing what I was doing! I really found this to be amazing. Imagine, if I could come up with a list of 100 names, Shirley there are many more than that. There are some that I don’t remember, and if 100 people told me that they were following my lead, there must be many hundreds that are following but did not tell me.

When I started this website, it was just shortly after I had come near to death, and had a quadruple heart bypass operation. One of the reasons that I started writing about this was so that I can help others to become more healthy. If I could go from being 430 pounds to becoming healthy, I knew that there would be a lot of people who would follow my example and make themselves more healthy as well. Even people who appear to be very healthy often have some issues that they want to improve on.

So, helping others improve their health was my ultimate goal. After I made it through my heart surgery, which I did not think I would make it, I felt that one of my purposes for the years that I have remaining was to help others with their health. After speaking with Trevor last week, going home and compiling a list of people that I know have started following my lead, it really makes me feel so good.

Following my lead. When I say that, don’t take it to mean that I think I’m the only person who has ever done fasting. I’m only using that term because the people that have talked to me have told me that they are following my lead, that they find me an inspiration, and that what I have done is helping them achieve health benefits too. When I started doing what I’m doing, I was following things that I had seen others do, or talk about. Particularly Dr. Jason Fung, the person that inspired me greatly.

So for all of those who have seen my success, and have decided to follow along and achieve their own successes, thank you so much. By having people do that, it is really fulfilling one of my true dreams, something that I knew I had to do when I lived through something that probably should have killed me.

I am so happy to see the start of a community of fasters from within my group of friends and associates. More power to you all.